Minecraft Steve Meets an Old One
by Trefoil-underscore
Summary: Exactly what it says on the tin. It's a scene from a long-winded and extremely bizarre crossover I'm working on (nothing's posted yet.) Rated T for sanity slippage. Also, Herobrine. I blame Convenient Alias for prompting me to write a "creepy short story." Three cheers for Convenient Alias. You should visit her page.


The door in the cliff wall was solid steel, and it was locked. It took Steve some time to break it down. Inside, a narrow path sloped down, dimly lit with active redstone which sizzled faintly as he passed it. His skin itched when he spent too much time around the stuff, but it didn't cause him serious damage. Ordinary humans became sick or died. This hallway full of the fizzling substance was an excellent security measure against anyone other than Steve. It opened out into an immense natural cave, sculpted to a rough symmetry under Herobrine's hands. It was almost completely dark, and yet there were no monsters. There was a heavy, lingering smell that he couldn't place, but it made his heartbeat pick up. It was a horrible smell, unlike zombies, unlike anything in the world that he'd yet encountered. Alchemy stuff, he told himself, and fiddled with the redstone lighting mechanism until it came on. The cave was in fact empty, and he found the complete absence of the darkness-loving undead slightly unnerving. Not that he'd prefer to have to fight for his life (or, more accurately, to avoid the trauma of respawning,) but it was odd. Shaking off the feeling, he examined the papers strewn across the floor. They were in a language he couldn't understand. He collected them carefully anyway and turned them over and over trying to decide what order they went in. Herobrine had spent nearly two years working away in this hole he'd dug out, but a few weeks previous he had suddenly left, leading Steve to break in, afraid of what would happen if he returned but curious what the creature that had once been his brother had been doing. He made the circuit of the cave and approached the raised platform in the middle. Some sort of debris was lying on it. As he climbed the steps, he registered two things about the smell: the unidentifiable, disconcerting smell grew much stronger, and almost blotted out behind it he could smell a familiar smell, the smell of death. He reached the platform and froze. The sprawled object in front of him was the shriveled body of a human. He stood without moving, registering the contorted body, the overpowering smells, and the prickling at the back of his neck. The body was strangely dried-looking, almost like he'd been trying to mummify it and given up. He stepped forwards. Suddenly there was an angry buzzing sound all around him and he lost sight of the cave behind a wall of strangely glowing, warping air. He instinctively tried to leap off the platform but felt himself seized by something with enormous strength. There was an overpowering stench, which combined with the pressure around his ribs nearly made him lose consciousness. He seemed to be in a huge, empty, echoing space much larger than the cave. A sound was rolling around and around him, beating in his head and trembling in his chest. It was an immensely deep chattering, like boulders rolled along under a flood, skulls falling down a deep crevice in the earth, or—laughter? His mind refused to recognize the sound as laughter, and yet he couldn't think of any other explanation for it. He hung in the air, unable to breathe, now finally registering that he'd thrown up from the reek. Acid stung his chin and mouth. **_Got you, human wizard._** Steve's mind came out of its flatline enough to realize that whatever the thing that had him was, it thought he was Herobrine. He couldn't speak. The pressure on him eased, and the thing gave him a shake that jarred the deep breath he'd taken out of him. Another of the deep, rolling, warped chatters vibrated in his chest. **_I was hoping you'd come back. It wasn't very polite to run off like that without—concluding negotiations? Still, it's very stupid of you. I'm surprised you didn't know better_** _._ Steve willed himself to speak and felt his vocal cords vibrating, but no sound came out in the strangely echoing place. **_No, foolish one, speak to me with your mind. This is the walking space—I cannot fully enter your world, though your carelessness has left a thin space._** Steve tried to understand what was happening to his body. He couldn't see anything holding him, but multiple, unbelievably strong bands were slowly wrapping around him, squeezing and choking him with, he guessed, sadistic pleasure. He was strangely unable to focus his eyes, but he thought that some foul black substance was soaking his skin and clothes at the places where there was pressure on him. He flailed halfheartedly against the things holding onto him and felt that the thing looked closely at him. **_You are not the one who called me down. Yet you look like him. Who are you, human? There is latent power in you, but now that I look closely I see you are not a wizard._** Steve formed the words _His brother_ with an intense mental effort and then collapsed into the thing's grip, shaking and strangely unable to control his eyes. He couldn't focus on anything and imagined that his eyes were rolling, though his entire head was aching at this point, from the stench and the loss of air, so it was hard to tell. **_The strong human has a brother?_** Steve didn't feel able to answer. **_Do you have the same…power that he has? You are unable to permanently die?_** Steve nodded once. At the moment, all he wanted was to die. **_Good. Well. I didn't believe he had any friends._** If he did, Steve certainly didn't qualify. He was more like prey. The thing… chuckled, if such a thunderous vibration could be called that. **_This is nice… You, human, will tell me where to find him. I believe I can enter your world briefly, and you will lead him to me, or vice versa, whichever you prefer. And then we'll have our little chat._** Another wave of the head-pounding, unmistakeably sadistic laughter rolled through him. Steve felt himself spun around and his head was wrapped up and squeezed firmly. Suddenly his eyes were focused in an intense gaze that he somehow recognized to be coming from directly in front of him, though he still saw nothing. **_Now, human. Think clearly. Where is he?_** He wasn't handing over his brother to this… thing. For one thing, it would be suicidal for him to attempt. For another, he just wasn't going to. This thing wasn't getting its invisible appendages on any kin of his. **_Human. You will speak to me._** The thing shook him again. Steve was limp, shaking and not breathing so much as giving a single long quavering gasp that couldn't resolve itself into inhalation or exhalation. **_Human?_** Suddenly a foreign Something invaded his mind, and he screamed in pain, somewhere finding the strength to lash out again, though the things he was now completely covered in kept him from actually moving his limbs. The Thing bore down on memories of his brother, his identity, where he had seen him last. Steve resisted as well as he could, still screaming as his mind fractured under the weight of an immense alien presence. **_Show me, human. You are powerless. He summoned me, he gets only what he deserves by meeting me again._** The Thing focused on the last times they had met and Steve found another reason to scream as he relived the time he ran through lava to get away from his brother. Then the time he set that beautiful redwood forest on fire just to screw with him and he could see the flames for weeks even after he escaped. Herobrine stalking him through seemingly endless nights, torturing him with fear, finally killing him slowly when he'd tired of his game. Sometimes he wounded him and then walked away without finishing him off, and this insult, for some reason, hurt him more than anything else. He was nothing to Herobrine. Nothing but a stress reliever, perhaps a source of amusement.

The Thing in question withdrew. The state of the immense abomination that was its consciousness could only be roughly compared, in anthropomorphic terms, to dumbfounded disbelief. It sat—hovered?—sprawled?—writhed in place, looking down at the human screaming in several of its foremost tentacles. It had completely snapped, which wasn't surprising. The Thing wondered what to do with it. He'd meant to take whatever information it had and then toss it, perhaps back into its own world, perhaps into another, depending on whether he felt it would be a good source of amusement. He'd snatched up a few humans from the old Armitage's planet and dumped them at Yuggoth, it had been rather entertaining, though he did find it disappointing how quickly their fragile minds snapped. Like this human here. He didn't know what to think of this human. There was some power in it, and he believed the thing could be an interesting specimen, though it was such a low life form. Then again, it was an immortal, wasn't it? Perhaps they could talk, once it stopped screaming. As several hours passed and the human showed no improvement the Thing grew tired of holding onto it. He passed along the between-space, peering through the thin places where worlds could be seen until he found a peaceful-looking one. He popped the human into it and settled down outside to wait.


End file.
